


This star-spangled disguise

by JaqofSpades



Category: Captain America, Marvel (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers, Thor - Fandom
Genre: F/M, ShieldShock - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-03-03
Updated: 2013-03-16
Packaged: 2017-12-04 03:12:30
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 6
Words: 4,572
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/705860
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/JaqofSpades/pseuds/JaqofSpades
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Some days he hated the shield and the costume, hated pretending to be perfectly polite and a shining example of the best and the brightest. Some days he just wanted to be a man. Some days he just wanted.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Prologue

**Author's Note:**

> Blame Merideath. Her prompt, my need to turn everything into psychodrama. (And porn. But that's a given.)

Some days, he hated the shield and the costume. Hated pretending to be perfectly polite and a shining example of the best and the brightest. Some days, he just wanted to be a man. 

Some days he just wanted.

Mostly, he had a handle on it. He’d smile and blush and pretend Little Miss Darcy with the hungry blue eyes was just playing with him. Her little joke with good ol’ Captain America. Nothing serious at all.

But then he’d feel her eyes on him, and catch her out in the half-lidded gaze that only seemed to fall on him. She would look away, and he’d watch her drag that thick lower lip between her teeth as she took a deep breath, long and slow and absolutely riveting.

He wants, he wants, he wants, and the worst thing is that he knows he’s not the only one. She’s forever clapping her hand over her mouth and apologising and trying to explain how things are different now, and she’s sorry she’s such a …

He never does hear exactly what she is, but he gets the idea. Too naughty for straight-laced Captain America. Too raw for sweet, shy Steve.

(He wants to walk his fingers up her thigh under the table, all the way to where her stockings end, and then even higher. Wants to dip into her wetness, and slick around her button, and tweak it until his fingers are sliding free. Wants to drive into her, three fingers wide, and make her twist and writhe while Coulson drones on, less than a dozen feet away.)

He adjusts himself discreetly, and turns his body so that he can’t see her in his periphery. Doesn’t mean he can’t feel her, or the thick, heavy air that stretches between them, just waiting for … something. Tip the balance, change the game, break the tension - doesn’t matter which cliche he chooses.

They all need him to be someone else.


	2. Want

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Wow. What an amazing response to such a tiny little tease. Thought I'd better deliver ...

"Steve. You're wanted upstairs."

Her voice trembles a little in the middle of her message, and he doesn't miss the flush that rises as she tries to look away from his sweat-slick torso. He slams the bag with one last punch, then grabs a towel to wipe his face, giving her a chance to escape if she needs to.

She doesn't want to, he knows that. They never do. The good girls disguised it with stammers and blushes, and the bad girls just climbed right on, but that was one thing sixty years hadn't changed. Everyone wanted to fuck the machine. Sometimes they even wanted Captain America.

Nobody spared a passing thought for Steve.

It's harder, in this place where they actually use his name. Easy to forget that's he's some sort of cipher to these kids, a cartoon character in red, white and blue. When they think of Steve Rogers, they actually mean Captain America. And Cap ... well. He has a reputation to preserve.

Captain America looks away when a girl gives him the eye. He'll stammer a bit and if she's too forward, he might even blush. He's apple pie and yes Ma'am and church on Sunday. 

Steve was too, once.

Before he'd been beaten down one too many times. Before he watched his friends ship out, one by one, leaving him to hold the fort. Before he'd sold his soul for the body of Mr Universe and his unique version of eternal damnation.

Wanting to be loved. Wanting to be wanted. But trapped so deeply in this star-spangled disguise, no one will ever see him for who he really is.

Not even clever Darcy Lewis, who frowns over her spectacles when he lays on the gosh darn a little too thick. Who eyes him like the others, but sees more than most. Who had come to yesterday's meeting in a skirt so sinfully short that he nearly blew the whole gig.

They'd been dragging into the second hour of Tony's latest techical reports when the pen she'd been nibbling fell to the floor.

"Let me," he'd volunteered, and maybe she'd forgotten what she was wearing. Maybe she'd done it on purpose.

He didn't really care, but he probably shouldn't have given in to the urge to run his finger all the way up her bare leg. And once he was there - well. One good schoolroom trick deserved another, and maybe he wanted to give her something to think about. Her gasp, unfortunately, drew the attention of the whole room.

"Sorry, Tony," she'd apologised. "Rogers can't keep his hands to himself."

They were still laughing when he hauled himself back into his chair, blushing for good measure.

"Just be grateful it wasn't me under there," Tony had grinned, and Darcy rolled her eyes with a heartfelt "oh yes."

And the briefing rolled on, their little joke forgotten. He was the only one who noticed Darcy constantly smoothing her skirt, then crossing and uncrossing her legs to see if anything was visible.

"What'd you write?" she muttered as they filed out of the room, but he simply grinned and made his retreat, smirking at the thought of her hiking up that tiny skirt to inspect his handiwork the minute she found somewhere private. It entertained him all night, that thought.

He's not smiling now, as she hovers in the doorway and watches him silently. He's picturing the heart he drew, and remembering the feel of her thigh under his fingers, and sending up a prayer of thanks for the baggy workout pants he's wearing.

"Steve waz here? Really?"

"You were acting like a schoolkid," he says after a moment. "That whole pen thing. Thought I'd play too."

"Makes me wonder what you got up to in high school," she says. 

He doesn't blush, or look away. She asked, after all.

"You wouldn't have looked at me in high school. Too skinny and small. I would'a offered to help you with your homework, and you'd probably have to ask your friends who I was."

"And you might have said yes, because skinny little Steve? He was a good guy. Safe."

He moved closer, throwing the towel away as he went, dragging her eyes to his naked chest. 

"And all the time you were laughing at my jokes, I'd be thinking about getting under your skirt. Between your thighs. Little bite, maybe. Right where that heart was," he says softly, eyes drifting down to where her fingers are plucking at the hem of yet another small skirt. It's longer than yesterday's, but flared. Easier to get under.

She makes a small sound of alarm, and leans back on the door as if she needs it to prop her up. Her hair is chocolate halo against the glossy white wood, and he has a vision of pushing her higher, yanking down her panties and hiking her knees up over his arms, then driving into her. It's so real he can feel the ends of that mane tickling him as she clutches around his cock, and when she comes, her forehead falls into little furrows he'll kiss smooth ... 

Darcy clears her throat and he jumps, sure she can see the lust written on his face. He's about to apologise when she tries again.

"Things changed while you were asleep, soldier. World learned a few things," she says, trying to make a joke of it. "Nerds got game, these days. You're sweet enough and shy enough, some girl is gonna snap you up."

He laughs, and hopes it's surprise that makes her look so shocked, and not the bitterness he can hear behind it.

"Don't confuse me with him, Darcy. Captain America is just the day job."

He looms over her, trapping her against the door and abandoning any pretence at being wholesome and gentlemanly. 

"And you don't know a damn thing about Steve fucking Rogers."


	3. Need

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> so, I'm a tease. You got that, right?

One thing she does know.

If he wants her to push him away, he's going about it the wrong fucking way. Cute, smart and damaged? May as well have "property of Darcy Lewis" stamped on that mouthwatering ass.

Yeah, she was in trouble before, when he was just a set of pretty blue eyes on top of the sort of bod every girl dreams about. But she works with a shit ton of hot guys, and she'd managed to ignore most of them. Sorta. Mostly. (Okay. So she'd made out with Hawkeye a few times, and been on dates with some of the SHIELD dudes. And she'd totally spied on Thor when had strolled out of the sauna stark naked. But come on. Living, breathing female here.) But when it came to Captain America, she had sworn to stay well clear.

He called her 'ma'am', for Christ's sake. And 'Miss Darcy'. (No one had called her 'Miss' before. Even Coulson called her 'Darcy' or 'Lewis'.) And he was such a goddamn gentleman - when she hip-checked him once, he'd just about picked her up to set her on her feet safely. Serious old-dude manners, and something about him had just shrieked 'not for you, Darcy Jane Lewis'. 

And then Coulson had asked her to take him a few field trips. Introduction to the 21st century and all that. 

"This museum pass should let you both in to all of the major museums, and you can claim any other entrance fees on expenses. Do some research to get a good spread of history, technology and cultural exhibitions. Avoid anything about World War II."

So they'd trooped dutifully around the city's cultural storehouses, and then collapsed onto a bench together outside of MOMA. He been progressively quieter, nodding and grunting instead of making the type of polite, inane conversation that she'd been putting up with all day. She'd put it down to mental exhaustion, or sheer boredom, but she was wrong.

"We can stop now, Miss Lewis. I've got the message," he said tiredly.

"Huh?"

"Agent Coulsen's message. Director Fury's message. 'Things have changed Cap, and you're gonna have to change too.' What do they think I am? An idiot?"

He shook his head and turned away, obviously trying to spare her his annoyance.

"Oh no, you don't, boyo. I know SHIELD has a bunch of headshrinkers trying to analyse you 24-7, but ... I'm not one of them. You can't be subtle with me. What's the problem, dude?"

He lifted his eyebrows at that - dude, apparently, hadn't made it into Captain America's lexicon yet - then shrugged his shoulders.

"Japanese electronics. German cars. Russian oil. The European Union, the United Nations, the WTO, the World Bank ... I get it. We lost the war. We're all at peace. Captain America isn't needed anymore. Trust me, Miss Lewis, that's quite allright with me," he said, and fuck, was that _longing_ in his voice?

"But why did they bother to bring me back if there's nothing for me to do? No wars to fight any more - they gonna turn me back into a song and dance man? Push out my chest and smile for the cameras?"

Darcy swallowed in shock at the realisation that no one had bothered to brief him on pretty much anything. And at the fact that government's most famous poster boy didn't seem real fond of being Captain America.

"Jesus, Steve, no. Nothing like that. You need to talk to Fury but ... there are other wars now. Dirty ones. Terrorists, and aliens, and weird shit like that," she explained.

He raised a disbelieving eyebrow and she nodded furiously. "Scout's frickin honour. Saw Thor take out a huge giant thing with my own eyes," she swore. "I can tell you one thing. The Avengers - people like you - they make people like me feel safe," she said softly.

"Well, that's fucking something," he huffed, and Darcy's eyes widened at the curse word. She saw the moment it registered, and something like resentment flashed in his eyes before the stiffening of his spine that marked his return to Captain America, legendary hero.

"My apologies, Miss Darcy. Now - what can you show me next?"

She had shrugged, and tried to find some enthusiasm for their next stop.

"Aeronautics? The Human Brain?" She looked up to catch his sigh of disinterest. "What do you actually want to see?"

He glanced across the road to where James Bond was seducing two willing women on a giant overhead screen.

"I'd pay money to see that," he smirked, and Darcy almost choked at the lustful glitter in Captain America's baby blue eyes.

Steve Rogers' eyes, she'll think later when he whispers one of Bond's racier lines in her ear. And the stunt in yesterday's meeting that left her thighs quivering and her libido in overdrive - Steve Rogers. No doubt about it. 

But this guy, muscles flexing as he looms over her, voice hoarse and husky as he makes threats that sounds like promises? Cock hard against her belly as he pushes her back into the door?

Steve fucking Rogers?

God.

"Don't care," she moans, and slides her fingers inside the trackpants, hooking up one leg to push them down with her toes in her sheer desperation to get him naked.

"But he needs to fuck me, right fucking now."


	4. Crux

His cock jumps free, and he makes a grab for his self-control. 

One Mississippi. For all the boys who never came home. Two Mississippi. For those who threw themselves at death. Three Mississippi. For ...

Steve Rogers. The little guy no one wanted to give a chance. The kid who always did his best, and battled for the underdog, and worked so fucking hard, and it always came to nothing. 'Til it came to this, he thinks bitterly, staring down at the swell of his pecs and seven-plus inches and treetrunk legs ... and the beautiful girl biting at his chest as her talented foot pushes the workout pants past his knees.

Spoils, he reminds himself. His due. Nothing special, or even personal. 

He's had more beautiful, he reminds himself as her hand closes around his cock. The harsh, dry pull almost hurts, but is so full of honest want that he surges against her anyway, a moan forcing its way out of his lungs even as he tells himself she's nothing special. 

Blonde girls, and redheads, and glossy peekaboo dos just like Veronica Lake ... he's had them all. Two and three a time when he was bored, one on his cock, the other on his face, and a third writhing in between - fucking good in the sack, show girls. He thinks of their faces, but can't quite picture them, just bodies, just sex, just boredom and anger and grief.

But there's never been anything like the bolt of lust that incinerates him when this girl steps up.

"Fuck me. Right fucking now," she demands, and there's no self control, no reason to use it, nothing but him and Darcy and what he hopes is a really solid door.

He hitches her up, intent on finding out whether reality can possibly match up to his fantasies of her. He drops a kiss into her hair - silky, yes, and absolutely everywhere, but he hadn't counted on the way it would smell, citrus and spice spinning his senses to yet another level of arousal. He jerks convulsively, and his naked cock somehow manages to find her sweet spot, never mind she's still wearing her panties. He burrows deep into increasingly damp cotton, nudging her clit every time, and their gasps and moans form a harsh duet of painful anticipation.

"God," she grunts, then gives way to something like a sob. "Gawd, Steve. Please."

He sets her feet back on the floor then drops to his knees, biting at her belly as he eases her panties down. His face is between her thighs before they hit the floor.

"Jesus Christ. You're bare!" he marvels, dropping an open-mouthed kiss on her mound in homage. He guides her foot over his shoulder, then dips his head for his first taste of her, grunting in satisfaction as her sweet tang invades his senses. He strokes her with the flat of his tongue, and flicks at the fast-blooming petals, but doesn't touch her clit. Not yet. 

"It's a thing," she pants, head thunking backwards against the door. "Welcome to the 21st century."

"You kids. Think you invented everything," he says, nipping at her thigh to drive it a little higher on his back. "First time I saw a completely bare pussy was in Paris. Two gorgeous goodtime girls. More interested in each other than they were in us, but," he smirked up at her, "Monique was a good sport. Happy to demonstrate every little trick she knew."

Steve holds her gaze as he spreads her wide with his fingers, then blows softly, sensitising every secret fold and cranny. She's shaking even before he touches her, but still he avoids the sensitive bud, making her work for a broader, wider sort of pleasure. There's no pattern to his movements, a random collection seemingly endless slow sweeps, and quick stabs, and hard sucks, never concentrating on any one pleasure centre long enough to let her come. Within minutes she is thrashing her hips about in desperation, and that, thank the Good Lord, is his signal. He traps her clit between his teeth, and lashes it with his tongue mercilessly.

Her howl of satisfaction has him grinning in triumph as he kisses his way back up her torso. Little Miss Darcy looks thoroughly debauched, her skirt twisted about her waist, and her sublime breasts spilling out over the top of her still-fastened bra.

'Don't think you're off the hook for comparing me to a Parisian whore," she pants as he flicks his tongue over one proud nipple and rolls the other between finger and thumb.

"Don't think I wouldn't enjoy any way you want to punish me," he breathes into her ear, before slicking his tongue over its delicate contour, then continuing his way down to find her mouth.

He hadn't kissed her yet, he realises as their tongues tangle together. Unthinkable, really, given how good it is. She tastes like the best apple pie he's ever had. The home he never knew. The freedom he lost the day he strapped himself into that chair. She's just a woman, his brain screams, and yes, they're both made of just flesh and blood and bone, but ... that's not all they are, his stubborn heart insists.

That's not all he is.

That's the least of him, Steve Rogers remembers.

As Darcy Lewis is about to find out.


	5. Coup

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'd hoped to have this up before now but then a) my daughter sprained her ankle and b) the Veronica Mars Movie happened. Neither allowed me the time or mental space for porn :D

Darcy is still rippling with bliss when he kisses her. Hard at first, edged with something dark and needy that slots like a jigsaw piece into her picture of the man. Steve fucking Rogers, she accepts, and wonders if he kissed like this, before.

He certainly didn't know how to do that before, she thinks as her body clenches yet again. She's so loose and shaky he's the only thing keeping her upright. Not that it's absolutely essential, she finds herself thinking as he mashes his mouth into hers. She doesn't need to be upright. 

She'd lay down on the floor if he promised to fuck these little explosions right out of her.

He laughs into her mouth when she bites down on his lip in frustration, and slides his tongue over her own in a dastardly tease. She responds in kind, cradling his face in her hands so she can watch him react. Those bright blue eyes are as dark aa denim right now, and his breath is skittering just like her own. Their mouths still as they take the time to stare, and feel, and recognise.

Something is happening. And it's not just about how short her skirt is, or how perky his pecs are.

The words are hanging in the air before she can call them back.

"Make love to me, Steve."

She's a coward, sometimes. Darcy knows this, and the way he stares at her, slightly shocked, makes her quiver right down to her bare toes. She wants to deny it, laugh at the very idea, but he's not going to let her.

He's actually going to do it, the bastard.

Already his hands are gentler, and she wants to moan, wants to push him back to rough and fast and hurts so good, but she's melting into him, soaking up the reverence in his fingers as if she actually deserves it.

"Darcy," he's whispering as his mouth moves down her throat. "Beautiful, funny Darcy," as he palms her breasts. pushing one up to trace his tongue around the pink crown as she watches, mesmerised. "Smart, gorgeous, naughty Darcy."

At least, that's what she thought he said, because he's suckling, hard, and she's reduced to "yes," and "mouth" and "fuck". Noun, not verb, because she's coming round to this adoration business.

Fuck yes, she's coming round as he switches to the other one, even as his arms slide under her legs, and he pulls them wide, her knees over his elbows, and slides her up and down, chest to chest, belly to belly. Cock to pussy.

"Steve. I. Need. You. Inside me," Darcy manages, and he's still fucking smiling, the prick. She angles her hips, intent on capturing him, but he shushes her and holds her away. 

"I need..." he rasps, and she's puzzled for a moment until she remembers he's basically a 1940s boy. Fury's briefing probably hasn't made it past modern day weapons yet.

"Birth control," she says. "You don't need a condom. Really," she groans, as his cock leaps against her, and she has to stop herself for reaching down.

"Just ... now. Steve. Please," and yes, Darcy Lewis. Officially reduced to begging.

"You're sure?"

All she can do is nod frantically, and moan, because he's circling his hips and the friction is fucking sublime as he pushes inside and _fuck_. He's hung like a horse and it's _huge_ and maybe she should have thought of this before now, because there's such as thing as too much of a very.good.thing, but holy fuck. Is that her fucking cervix or something? She's never been this full and oh God she's gonna black out ...

Someone's making all these pathetic little sounds, and it's not him because he's a constant stream of beautiful words in her ear, rocking in and out, gentler than anyone she's ever had. So deep, though. So big, it's almost too much. Almost, because that strangled sort of noise is his name ... Steve, Steve, Steve from the back of her throat and she's the one bucking her hips forward and forcing him deeper and faster and harder and more, please, never stop. More. 

His long fingers are digging into her ass as they pick up speed and she needs to rest her head against his neck to stop herself from flinging it backwards into the door. (Again. Because - ouch.) Darcy feels like a vine wrapped around a huge tree, warm and strong and so fucking majestic she wants to cry. Everything she needs, but he needs her too, and they're so much better like this, tangled together.

She's gonna put it down to the orgasm later, the ridiculous thoughts that surge up as he slams into her body, hips pistoning helplessly. There's no technique now, no clever fingers or slippery expertise, just gritted teeth and hammering cock as he releases into her. Maybe it's the freedom on his face that does it, she thinks in the last moment before she is flung into that place where there's no thought at all, simply sensation.

He's dropping kisses into her hair when her sanity resurfaces. They've dropped to the floor, and he's flipped them round so that she's basically reclining on a great big, hard blanket of man.

"Hey there, you," he smiles when she opens her eyes. "That was something."

Darcy can feel the blush heating her cheeks and prays he's not going to say anything about all of the heartfelt declarations. Which she's pretty sure she just thought, not said.

"What did you mean, though?" he asks.

"Mean, how?" she panics, swallowing in horror.

"You said something about freedom. 'So free'?" he asks.

"I don't know. You just - look different," she explains, cheeks heating again. "As if you don't care so much about everything."

Steve's eyes are distant as he tucks a stray lock of hair back behind her ear, obviously contemplating her words.

"It's Captain America's job to care. About everyone," he says eventually. "I get it. It's what I signed on for - and Steve used to care, too. Still does, I guess. But everyone else - they're gone. And it's all just so different - I don't even know why I'm here. Just beating an old drum. Maybe even just an echo," he says eventually.

He looks up and the pain in his eyes crucifies her. "And it's Captain America's echo. Steve Rogers is long dead."

She scrambles to face him, and seizes his shoulders to make her point.

"No, he's not. He's a bit of a fish out of water, perhaps, but he's here. Trust me - I know. He's warm and solid and can talk dirty like no one I've ever met." 

Steve smirks, but she refuses to let him sidetrack her. "Just - you have to let him out. Captain America has a team now, and you - you've got friends. And other people. Who maybe want to be more than friends," she says quickly, shocking herself.

"But - you got to let them. Not just lead them, but see who you are, too. I mean - some of these guys ... not the best on figuring out stuff, y' know? All that bash, bash, crash, kill? But that doesn't mean they can't understand."

She wants to stop there, but it needs to be said.

"And some of us want to understand. Really, really want to," she says, and it's the scariest thing she's done all day, being this honest. Unprecedented, really.

She figures if Darcy Lewis can admit she's so hot for a guy she wants to understand him, then Captain America can step out from behind his star-spangled disguise.

Because right now, all she wants is a chance to get to know Steve Rogers.


	6. Epilogue

Darcy has a tattoo right at the bottom of her spine. A five-pointed star in its bed of red and blue. Captain America's insignia.

She'd been 17, she explains. Comic book nerd, and Cap was her favourite. 

"If only I had known he had a superhot alter-ago," she says, waggling her eyebrows, and the tightness in his chest eases. He believes her, and maybe one day, he'll actually be able to laugh about it.

Not today, but soon, he hopes.

He likes to turn her around and make love to her slowly, watching his shield dance and sway as she writhes under his hands, all the while thinking "mine. Not yours. Mine." The victory is sweetest in the afterglow, when she calls his name, all drowsy and sated, and he knows that here, in their bed, is somewhere Captain America doesn't exist.

Maybe that's why one night, when he pulls her to lie on top of him, the way he likes to do, he finds his fingers tracing the outline of the star. It doesn't burn, the way it should. He doesn't hurt at all.

The balance has tipped, and it's finally his turn to collect.

Time to step up, Steve Rogers.

_fin_


End file.
